The view from the finish line

The first week of May! That means we are all getting ready to close out the late spring term. For some, it means a nice break for the summer. For others, it means just another class completed as Summer term starts right up. For me – it means the end of the IMC program. Yep – my final days in the capstone class are here. I just wrote my last discussion post!

Wow – so how does it feel? Exhilarating.

The capstone class certainly is a challenging course. It will push your limits, make you reach into the portal of resources, tools and knowledge that you have gained over the course of the program. It will fully solidify that you have what it takes to leave this program and take your career to the next level. It is a feeling of success and you leave with a very robust proposal that can be put right into your portfolio.

As I reflect over the past 2.5 years, I remember starting in IMC 610 and wondering if I would make it. Some classes were more challenging and some were less challenging, which completely lines up with areas that I have more and less experience in. I was brave and pulled off a double load one term, which I don’t recommend doing too often! My all time favorite courses were PR, Cause Marketing and HealthCare marketing (either due to subject or mix of topics/professors/classmates). I have benchmarked events in my life by papers I was writing at the time (oh yeah, the business trip where I was writing my final paper on the plane etc). The flexibility of this program has allowed me to continue to live my life over the past two years. I have appreciated that so much as I have watched peers go through programs where they are sitting in the classroom for 2-3 nights a week. That’s hard to manage with a job and a family. I am certainly looking forward to being able to just relax this summer and catch up with friends and family.

It has been a pleasure learning along side of you and sharing thoughts with you through this blog. I thank all the staff and professors as they have given invaluable input over the course of my time in the program. Good luck this week as you finish your final projects.  I wish all of you the best as you continue and move to the next phases. Press on – it is worth it!

Before I go, I’d love to cheer you on. Where are you in the program and what class are you taking this summer? Or are you planning to take a break and start back up in the fall?

IMC Real World Application + Value

One of the biggest concerns most students have with selecting and attending school is the worry that their education will go unused or serve little purpose. I know for a fact that I’m sometimes worried that what we discuss in class will never be of value. Motivation is such a huge factor for maintaining solid participation in any endeavor and for students engaged in the furthering of their education nothing is more important.

The effort and overall student attitude towards class work can be challenging and we might find ourselves procrastinating a bit because of a lack of motivation or unclear value. Enter my experience with the Integrated Marketing Communications Master’s program at W.V.U. (Disclosure: Nobody paid me to write this post nor is it influenced by anyone. It is the result of complete satisfaction with timely and real world application of the highly valuable concepts, ideas, and knowledge areas of I.M.C.)

Today’s brands are tasked with the challenges of aligning brand purpose with cause. Audiences hold a positive orientation towards those brands that support social responsibility. The right match between brand and cause (nonprofit) can serve as an excellent case of synergy and fit the realm of a win-win situation. These are insights that come straight from and are reiterated in IMC624, my Cause Marketing course. In fact, our recent week two discussion asks the following question:

Describe the important role of “Millennials” in corporate social responsibility. How do you think this will impact cause marketing, if at all?

As a Millennial myself (according to some generational timeline), the topic is relevant, timely, and of a great importance helping me to explore the demographic and psychographic characteristics that emanate from my generation. To effectively reach Millennials, brands have to maintain a strong understanding of the nuances that drive this group. The right cause can be a spark of momentum and help drive mobilization for the right cause marketing campaign.

So you can be glad to know that during a recent inspiration trip to Barnes and Noble I was delighted to see several articles on Millennials in such high profile publications as HOW design magazine, Booz & Co.’s strategy + business, and Misc magazine. It was refreshing and comforting to see the topic of Millennials make the cover of these publications adding a great sense of real world value to the very subject material of my IMC coursework.

That’s something that not everyone gets to experience. The value of Integrated Marketing Communications offers a wealth of opportunity for those in business and beyond.

Brand Loyalty & NYC!

Last week was an exciting one! We kicked off Late Fall, and as I mentioned before, I’m taking Brand Equity Management. This course already has me thinking differently when shopping and evaluating brands. During Week 1, we discussed which products we feel it’s necessary to be brand specific with, and why we believe so. It was a great discussion!

I completed my discussion post on Tuesday and by Wednesday, I was on a plane headed to NYC with a good friend from college. We had tickets to see Thursday’s Live with Regis & Kelly. If you’ve never been to a taping of a show you enjoy, I highly recommend it! It was fun to see all the behind-the-scenes happenings on a show I’ve watched many times!

We took Kelly chocolate buckeyes, an Ohio treat that she had mentioned she liked on a prior show. We were able to see Eva Longoria, Snooki, and Katie Couric during our hour-long visit. I can’t think of 3 more different people to all be tied together in 1 episode!

Me, Kelly, and the chocolate buckeyes!

My trip also made me appreciate the IMC Program’s flexibility. Had I been in a traditional Master’s program, much more planning would have had to go into my trip, and perhaps, I couldn’t have gone at all. I knew that I could work ahead in my class to ensure an enjoyable trip and that when I returned, I’d be more refreshed, inspired, and cultured…and what could be better than that?

Check out some other pictures below and post some fun trips you’ve experienced recently!

The view from our seats

Ice skaters in Central Park

Radio City Music Hall

Social Media, iOS5, and All Things Apple!

Main image on Apple.com

Recently, the world lost an incredible man who changed the way we live our daily lives. Whether it be the computer we use at work or at home, the phone we use to communicate and connect with people, or the movies we go to see on our days off, Steve Jobs has had something to do with all of it. I was sitting at a restaurant having dinner when I received a few text messages on my iPhone about Steve Jobs passing away. In an instant, there were tons of articles, pictures, and tributes to the American genius. Most people did not even realize how much he had to do with all of these technological advancements that we now enjoy today. He had a huge impact on the tech world and will always be known for the amazing products that he made possible for us. Thank you Steve for all of my Apple products that I love and making all of our lives enriched with great, innovative technology!

Some of the new features from iOS5

Not only was the Twitter world exploding with tweets about Steve Jobs and his unfortunate death, but the iOS5 update for the iPhone was the thing to talk about. I added #iOS5 to my saved searches on Tuesday, Oct. 11 because I wanted to see when the update was released. I eagerly awaited the Oct. 12 launch of the software. There were rumors that it would be released at midnight but that was not the case. As I refreshed my tweets with the hashtag iOS5, everyone was let down that it was not there on as soon as it turned October 12th. Each minute, there were thousands of tweets about the iOS5 and there was so much anticipation about the 200+ new features that came along with it. This update is the most extensive update out of all of the operative systems that have been released since the launch of Apple’s iPhone.

There were a few problems that Apple ran into, as did I, during the launch of the iOS5. When it finally arrived, there were so many people who were trying to upgrade at the same time that there were errors all over the world. Over half of the people who were trying to upgrade could not do it because of this error. Of course, I was one of the individuals who had this internal communications error and was very frustrated with this whole situation. After calling AppleCare and them telling me that I will probably have to get a new phone, I looked to my social media outlets to get some more information. On my Facebook news feed, I saw that a ton of people were having the same problem. It relieved my worry that there was nothing wrong with my specific iPhone and that it was just an overwhelming amount of people trying to get the software at the same time. I found this article that explained the whole communication problem.

Although the experience was rather complicated and frustrating, considering I had been waiting at midnight for the software to launch and it didn’t release till 1pm, it was well worth the wait. One of the best features that this update includes is the integration of Twitter with the phone. This shows the worldwide importance of social media and how it is integrated into our lives every day. If you have not see all the iPhone features, here is a video of the new iOS5 software and what it has to offer its users.

Until next time, happy tweeting, texting, and talking!

Ains

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9 weeks till Christmas which means it’s consumer promotion time.

The start of late fall term is always a reminder of just how close Christmas really is. So it’s time to get your shop on! This time of year there are promotions everywhere, both in-store and online ranging from deep discounts, buy one get ones (BOGO), freebies, free shipping and more.

A few weeks back I was walking through the mall at lunch and stopped in my tracks at a promotion that confused me. Typically, promotions are short term techniques used to get your customers to do something with common objectives being an increase in sales, product awareness or brand loyalty. They come in various forms such as coupons, rebates, promotional pricing, samples, freebies, premiums, contests, sweepstakes, trade-ins etc and are intended to either reduce the overall cost of the product or add more benefit by giving the consumer more for their money.

Free smartphone with any Piercing Pagoda Purchase

The promotion? Piercing Pagoda: Free smartphone with any Piercing Pagoda purchase and a new 2 year plan with data feature.

I have not yet taken the elective course on Consumer Promotions (IMC 617) so I am relying on the content covered in Direct Marketing (IMC 616), therefore I am going to ask my fellow classmates who have taken Consumer Promotions to weigh in on this one for me. For those of you who aren’t familiar, Piercing Pagoda is a jewelry boutique selling earings etc. One of the little mall shops that you can walk into and get your ears pierced on the spot. So what does this have to do with smartphones and cell phone plans? You can spend as little as $10 and get this promotion – not exactly encouraging an up-sell or requiring a particular dollar amount to launch product sales. It doesn’t encourage consumers to come back and redeem on their next purchase. In fact, the promotion has nothing to do with their product base. I assume that this falls into the premium promotional category where the free product doesn’t necessarily consist of the product the company sells, although usually there is some connection. So why choose this particular campaign? Are they making commissions on every new plan that is sold? Or is this just a great way to target their base, which is teenagers (although you have to be 18 or older to qualify cutting out a good portion of the teenage market – also a new cell phone plan with data feature would be a pricey promotional requirement – it has to be a new plan, commit to 2 years, spend anywhere from $50- $120/mo – a bit of a hefty freebie isn’t it).

So what’s your thoughts on this? Doesn’t it seem that a free smartphone is a high promotional premium for a product as cheap as $10? Also, promotions tend to be short term – I saw this walking in the mall 6 weeks ago, I see it is still active on their website so not sure how long it has been running in total so far. Is it truly a promotion or a strange brand extension disguised as a promotion? Obviously we would need to know more about the objectives and the outcome of the campaign, but with what we know – I would love to hear your feedback.

And, while you’re out shopping this season, if you find promotions that you thought were either great or horrible, likely to be effective or ineffective – post them here.

By the book…without any books

Hand me my glasses and affix a Kick Me sign to my back, because today I’m going to blog about…wait for it (trumpets blare)…The Library! I know, I know, but keep reading, because it’s going to be awesome and you get to meet a WVU grad who’s really nice, super smart, and knows her away around a search engine like nobody’s business.

No need to pay extra or look for another source...IMC students can access "paid" content for free

Not that I missed the endless wandering through stacks or all-nighters in the study carrels from my undergrad days, but within a few days of starting in the IMC program, a question suddenly came to mind: I’m in Seattle and WVU is in Morgantown, so how am I going to get to the library? It didn’t take long to find out that a lot has changed since the mid-1990′s in the world of collegiate libraries, just about all of it for the better. At WVU, this means that nearly any database you could find in the on-campus libraries in Morgantown is also available online to IMC students and other distance learners. And, while Google has the algorithm to find most information online, these databases have the information that most publishers don’t want to give away for free. When a Google  search leads to the dreaded paywall, chances are the same article is waiting for you in the library at no extra cost — it’s included with your tuition.

For this, we can thank the members of the e-Resources Committee at WVU Libraries and their chairperson, Penny Pugh. Penny is the award-winning Head of Reference at the downtown campus library in Morgantown and the person most IMC students will communicate with if they email, IM, or call for reference help during their time in the program. I think I’ve done a pretty good job of navigating the library’s resources during the past two years, but Penny still had some new tricks to show me during a phone conversation last week. Here are the top three, as determined by yours truly:

1. Summon: Sure, you can look through all of the marketing databases one-by-one, but this brand-new tool searches across all of them instantly and is dead simple to use. The links to the actual articles can be a bit buggy, but it’s a fast-as-Google way to find out what’s available on your subject du jour.
2. LibGuides: Penny is sometimes asked to create resource pages for specific classes. The ones for Marketing and Advertising were created for undergrad classes and look handy for IMC research, too.
3. Google Scholar (via WVU): When you access Google Scholar via the WVU Library, you’ll get direct links to any article in the search results that’s available through the library.

Penny Pugh, Head Reference Librarian at the Downtown Campus Library

Penny is a WVU alumni who has seen reference materials at the library migrate from paper to Bitnet to CD-Rom and, during the past ten years or so, to the Internet. With a firm belief that good research can “add immeasurably to student success,” Penny spends most of her time working with students from the business, humanities, and journalism/IMC programs, both at the reference desk and in the classroom. Her #1 tip for students, both current and prospective, in the IMC program is to remember that “research is a recursive process,” so it’s important to “carefully read the (search) results you got, try to understand why you got it, and if it meets your needs.”

My undergrad days were over before all of this information moved online (heck, before Google even existed), so I’ve been amazed by all that I’ve been able to find and discover online while completing my IMC coursework. ABI/INFORM and Google Scholar are my go-to starting points for research. If you’re a current student, where do you normally start your research? Prospective students, what would you like to know about the library before you start in the IMC program?

IMC on the half shell

The Walrus and Carpenter has received national attention

Here in this little corner of Seattle known as Ballard, USA, the local bumper stickers remind us that this is simply a “sleepy little drinking village with a fishing problem.” So, imagine our surprise when one of the newest restaurants in town garnered a mention in the New York Times and showed up on the Best New Restaurants list in Bon Appétit. With my parents visiting from Tennessee, I figured this oyster bar would be the perfect place for a relaxing lunch on their last day in town. Perfect! Except they aren’t open for lunch.

I hopped online to check out the reviews on Urbanspoon and came up with another option: a waterfront restaurant that I would have guessed was just a tourist trap where you pay for the view. The 90% positive rating suggested otherwise and, sure enough, we had a great lunch complete with a dozen fresh, delicious oysters.

Accolades from a newspaper or magazine still mean something, to be sure, but a decade ago they would have been virtually the only source of information or opinion about restaurant quality and service. A week ago, we had Urbanspoon, TripAdvisor, Yelp, and OpenTable. Yesterday, Google announced it’s joining the fray with its acquisition of Zagat. Popular opinion can now guide our restaurant choices whether in a big city like Seattle or a small town like Connell, WA (pop. 5,150).

Yelp helped us to find this excellent small-town diner while traveling last month

The question is: what will guide us to the most useful, reliable source of information? If Urbanspoon is a review database that also takes reservations and OpenTable is a reservation service that also features reviews, then which is the best source of information for planning your next meal out of the house? Bottom line: if you worked for one of these services, how would you differentiate yours from all of the others?

As a student in the IMC@WVU program, you’ll have the opportunity to answer questions like this from a variety perspectives and using the entire spectrum of IMC tools: research and analysis, customer behavior, creative strategy, storytelling, and more. If you’re already in the program, what types of challenges have you tackled for a local, national, or global brand?

Back to School and Football Season!

One of my first WVU football games with 3 Sigma Kappa sisters

Now that school is back, it can only mean one thing: FOOTBALL! Not only as a current WVU IMC student but an undergraduate alumni from WVU as well, my favorite social activity as a mountaineer is the football games. There is nothing like walking in Morgantown and seeing tons of family, friends, and fans of the best school in the world.

This will be my last season living in Morgantown during football season, but I plan on coming back every year for many games! There is no way that I could move away and never come back to see my team. It is one of those experiences that you will remember for your whole life and treasure all of the times you spent with your fellow Mountaineers.

Now this early fall semester I am taking two courses: Multicultural Marketing and Applied Public Relations. Both of these classes I feel will be very beneficial in my career as an IMC professional. Multicultural Marketing will be a class I will use just in living in a metropolitan area in the country. The Baltimore Washington area is very diverse and there will be many different cultures that companies are looking to market towards.  I hope to learn a lot this semester in the course from my professor, Dr. Gyongyi Konyu-Fogel, and also from my classmates.

My other course is Applied Public Relations which will expand on what I have learned in my PR Concepts and Strategies class that I took last year. We have started writing about a non-profit organization of our choice and as a passionate animal lover, I chose to look into the Humane Society of Baltimore. I am glad that I am learning from the Advising Director of the IMC program, Professor Shelly Stump. I had the pleasure of meeting her at the 2011 Integrate Conference and it is great to finally be working with her in class.

Our new home is a work in progress

While learning from my professors and classmates, I am also going through the phase of being a first time home buyer. My husband and I just purchased a house in the Howard County, MD area and are looking to move in during the month of November. As you can see, it is still in its beginning stages and has a lot more work left to do.

But my husband and I have been traveling back and forth from Morgantown to Baltimore deciding all of the things that go with buying a new home. I am really enjoying being able to completely design our house instead of having to purchase a home that has previously been built.

It is a very exciting time and I look forward to using the concepts that I am learning throughout the semester when starting a new job in Baltimore. There are so many great topics that have been able to learn about and can’t wait to talk about them in my interviews.  My main focus now is finishing my masters degree, getting ready to move, and enjoying my family and friends in Morgantown before we leave!

Lets Gooooooooooooooo Mountaineers!!

Until next time!

Ains

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Rewarding Yourself in the IMC Program

I’m curious to see what my fellow IMC friends do to reward themselves. After all, most of us are working full-time, attending school, and have other commitments. We’ve all got to have a little fun!

This past week, I had plans get canceled on Tuesday night, so I spent the night at home writing my discussion board posts. Yep, my initial discussion board posts, as well as all 4 responses to my classmates. Although I had an unusual burst of energy and was totally up for the challenge, I must say, doing all my posts in one night is a rarity for me. I usually spread out my posts and do one per night, Tuesday thru Friday, because I feel more refreshed doing my writing a little at a time.

But on Tuesday night, I was so proud of myself that I texted my fellow Northeast Ohio IMC student, Lisa, who said she had completed her initial post the previous Saturday! I’m a slacker!

I was very happy to have a majority of my school work done by Tuesday night. This freed up my Wednesday and Thursday nights to have some fun.

Wednesday night I played tennis for the first time during the week in quite awhile. I usually play on Saturdays, but this week, having school work out of the way, I was able to attend an additional drill session. On Thursday night, I saw Bridesmaids (I know, I’m a few months behind on that one) at our local dollar theater.

This week taught me the importance of time management in the graduate school balance. These rewards were meaningful to myself, and neither one was expensive or anything I’d regret (like food or a trip to the mall). I must say – I think I’m going to try and knock out future posts in the same fashion I did this week. Because I really could get used to some Wednesday night tennis and dollar movies!

How do you reward yourself for juggling it all?

How science, a bathroom stall and brown shoes led me to the IMC program

Hello to all the IMC students and those searching for a master’s program. My name is Amy Clausen and I’m going to be sharing my experiences with you over the next few months. I thought I would start with a bit of background and what led me to the IMC program.

I graduated with a B.S. degree in molecular biology back in 1993. I remember how excited I was to get my first job in a lab, only to realize that it was a whole lot of repetitive tasks such as hours upon hours of being donned in a getup that was just shy of a hazmat suit while I sat in a sterile room pouring cell culture media. Half a year later and a couple of crazy co-workers, I found myself in another lab doing endless pipetting day after day. I was only a year into my career and wanted to find a new one (sidenote: I have tremendous appreciation for those who can do research all day as its a critical part of our advancement in medicine and science – its just not me).

The bathroom scene:

In the public bathroom at the lab I was working at, I was talking to another one of my co-workers about how bored I was of the job. I thought all the stalls were empty but the was mortified when I heard a flush. I glanced over to notice a pair of brown shoes. I quickly washed my hands and headed out for some more mindless pipetting. Later that afternoon as I was sitting at my cubicle entering the data into an excel spreadsheet, I happened to notice those same brown shoes walking by. I looked up to realize that those brown shoes were attached to the feet of my current boss (sigh). Yep, we made eye contact and we both knew that the conversation was heard. But instead of making my life miserable, she did me the greatest favor of all time.

Making the move to marketing:

My current boss in the lab happened to be friends with the marketing director at the biotech company I was working for. The marketing director was looking for an assistant and how lucky for me, my boss figured I was perfect for the job, knowing that I was bored to death of being in the lab. And that’s how it all began. Ever since making the move into marketing back in 1995, I had been self-educating and reading just about every book I could relating to marketing. I was fortunate to work my way up and transfer to another biotech company that I am currently working for now. It was the best move I could have ever made and have loved being able to use my science degree in a non-lab position.

So why the IMC program or better yet, why the IMC program after being on the job for 16 years?

Several reasons:

1. Focused and relevant program.
   The days of spray and pray marketing are over (you know – spray your message to the masses and pray that it sticks to someone). When I started in marketing in 1995, the internet was just starting to make its debut. To be accurate, it was called the world wide web and all our marketing materials specifically said “visit us on the world wide web at www.domain.com”. Can you imagine? When’s the last time you called it the world wide web (or included the www for that matter) or had to tell people what that meant? Mass advertising was the common approach. That’s all changed now. With the rise of social media channels, interactivity online, smartphones, tablets/ereaders etc., consumers control what they want to read, when they want to read it and how they want to access it. It’s no longer the marketers decision as to what to put out there and how (unless you of course want to be ignored). I wanted a program that would emphasize the newest platforms/approaches/channels/tactics etc. You can’t get a better program than the courses offered in the IMC at WVU that gives you 13 solid classes covering every topic from PR to consumer promotions to cause marketing to creative strategy to emerging media to marketing research to web analytics to mobile marketing and on and on and on. I didn’t want an MBA that focused all on business and gave me 4 high-level overview classes of marketing. If you’re up against the MBA in the next marketing interview, who do you think will be more competitive considering the marketing environment today?
2. Flexibility.
   I am a full-time working mom of 3 kids. My job requires me to travel at times with client visits and conferences. The last thing I wanted was to be tied to a classroom. The IMC program allows me to sit on the sidelines of the soccer field while I watch out of one eye and type my posts on my iphone at the same time. Sure, it means I multi-task, but that’s a whole lot better than missing the games because I am sitting in a classroom. I’ve completed posts on an airplane and sitting aside the Mediteranean Sea in Israel for business. It goes where you go and you do it on your own time (which sometimes means at 1 am – but I choose when it works for me, not the other way around).
3. Diversity and credibility. 
   I would be as bold to say you won’t find a program with as diverse a student base covering all corners of the country, all levels of the workforce with an incredible cross-section of backgrounds. The professors aren’t by-the-book kinds that are only in the classroom every day. They are out there in the thick of it with you. They have an enormous amount of experience of things that work and don’t work. The program is also attached to a physical brick and mortar school that is accredited. That was important to me in a time where online and virtual places are popping up all over. I didn’t want to find out that my degree was purchased from some guy in a garage somewhere.

So that’s the story that led me here today. What were some of the reasons that brought you to the IMC program? Or if you are still looking for a masters program,  what is it that you are looking for?